So, it’s my last blog post. By now, you should know what that means – it’s time to expose another one of my shamelessly weird hobbies. When I’m not planning Jimmy Fallon’s downfall or thinking about how most critically acclaimed movies aren’t as good as animated children’s movies, I open a random word generator and try to come with as bizarre a story as possible from whatever it gives me, and I thought I’d give it another go for the last blog post I will ever write in my life. It’s weird to say that after a whole school year, but oh well. Time goes on.

How this works: Bolded words were randomly generated, and everything else I wrote to connect them. Enjoy!

So I was at the airport, and some guy came up to me saying, “Sir? I think you have a dangerous disease from eating too many cigarettes!” I was completely caught off guard, so I had to think on my feet, and here’s my response: “Who even are you? Have you ever even taken a physics class? Do I look like I have any cigarettes in my possession? I’m a 17 year old child minding my own business in O’Hare International Airport. I am allergic to tobacco, and you come up to me saying I have a cigarette disease? And I’m not even going to comment on the fact that you thought I was eating cigarettes. Even my family wouldn’t stand for this and god knows they can’t even stand me!”

Angry, I stormed off to the bathroom for a moment, and thought about turning this interaction into a fire freestyle rap to perform in the studio. Precisely at that moment, the speaker voice announced the departure of my plane, and I sprinted to the gate so I wouldn’t miss my flight. During my flight, I was trying my best to study economics for my upcoming final.

Supply, demand, GDP, and all the other stuff that I can’t think of right now. But, for some reason, I couldn’t get the cigarette disease guy out of my head. My entire life, I have been building up my reputation like an establishment, with respect being the real wealth that I owned. So yeah, I still don’t know what the NASDAQ is. But at least I have friends! Back to reality, I suffered a near-fatal injury getting off the plane. The flight attendant started playing follow the leader so deboarding wouldn’t become an apocalyptic nightmare, but I accidentally walked into the AP chem titration lab in the back of the plane!

It was an absolute disaster – one person almost lit their hair on fire with a Bunsen burner and someone else who didn’t do his homework was having communication issues with his lab partner and they couldn’t bring their Erlenmeyer flask to the right temperature! Government problems, am I right? Anyways, I walk out of the plane and somehow, straight onto the set of hit American game show, Jeopardy! The category was blood, and at that moment I knew it was a possibility that this was all a dream. But with my good fortune, I got the Daily Double, and oh, was I going all or nothing! The answer was: these look like little bowls and move really fast. Easy! What are frisbees! Nope, it was platelets. I knew I should have paid attention in algebra. Dejected at losing over 3 million dollars, I went to the grocery store, hoping to buy some blueberries on sale with efficiency because I just realized I left my headlights on for a week straight, and now I won’t be able to get back to my apartment. At this point, you must be wondering – Anjana, what is wrong with you? Who hurt you so much that week after week after week you write blog post about stupid topic after blog post about stupid topic after blog post about stupid topic. What is the outcome of this story and why will it make my life better in any way? News flash. It won’t. You know how technology is – you start clicking “Generate Random Nouns” on https://randomwordgenerator.com/noun.php and you just – well, you just don’t stop. It’s like you are the star of the movie Possession, only the only thing possessing you is https://randomwordgenerator.com/noun.php. And don’t even get me started on climate change. We (we being literally the government because I have no power in this) have to come to an understanding about what we can all do to help the collective fight against climate change, and more importantly, overpriced airport food. That’s the real enemy. Habitat loss? Mass extinction? Cry me a river. Actually, please do that. They’re all drying up. I think I should release a statement about this on Twitter and pretend to be a D-List celebrity who is just saying this because I am being sponsored by a greenwashing fast fashion company. Or I could pretend to be the president. But I might get in trouble for that one. I just realized I never told you what I bought from the grocery store – chocolate! I went home and started watching reality TV shows on E! because my county has no drama, and I love a good story about people not meeting the requirements for MENSA and going for the next best thing – The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.

I watched one of the real housewives get ready for her pre-LASIK eye examination because glasses could make her look over 35 and she’s already over 50 so that could be a problem. 4 hours later, I woke up from my intense sugar-crash nap. The LASIK was a success! As celebration, she goes to her pre-ear surgery consultation because hearing aids could make her look over 60 and she’s already over 80 so that could be another problem.

Wait, how long was I asleep?

Alright, take a chill pill guys. For obvious reasons, I didn’t actually ask ChatGPT to write my blog post, but with the recent release of ChatGPT 4 and my dad constantly bringing it up just to tell me that my job skills will be obsolete in less than 10 years and that I have to learn advanced computer programming over summer vacation so that I’m financially dependent from my parents in my 30s, I thought – “why not use it for my blog post?” That, combined with March Madness and my complete lack of basketball skills and knowledge led me to come up with a fictional character duel bracket and see if I agree or disagree with ChatGPT’s answers on who would win each round. Furman may have won against Virginia (which is apparently a big deal), but let’s see if Elsa from Frozen could beat up Han Solo.

First up – Shrek vs. Ant-Man. I thought this would be a pretty even fight considering Shrek’s strength and Ant-Man’s technological advantage. 

Here’s what ChatGPT had to say: In a fight between Shrek and Ant-Man, the outcome could go either way, as both characters have unique strengths and abilities.

It proceeds to talk about Shrek’s strength, fighting skills, and surprising agility compared to Ant-Man’s power as “a superhero who can shrink himself down to the size of an ant” (never would have guessed) who can control ants. ChatGPT thinks that if Ant-Man entered Shrek’s ear or nose, he would gain the upper hand, but Shrek’s resistance to damage could make that difficult, and he could knock out Ant-Man with a single punch. Overall, no winner could be decided because it depends on the circumstances of the fight. In my opinion, I think Shrek has to be the winner of this matchup. If we take the route of Ant-Man entering his ears, and maybe this is my ex-AP Physics 2 brain speaking, but with the conical shape of Shrek’s ear, isn’t there a possibility that any attempt by Ant-Man to enter Shrek’s ear will be met by an impassable tornado-like vortex? Or maybe I didn’t deserve to pass that class. Who knows. 

Our next contestants are Patrick Bateman and Megamind. Fortunately, I did agree with ChatGPT on this one that Megamind would 100% win in a fight. Although Patrick Bateman would be able to psychologically manipulate Megamind pretty easily. Megamind’s advanced technology and coolness factor would definitely come out as the winner. ChatGPT had a similar argument, saying that Megamind’s high-tech gadgets would allow him to analyze Patrick Bateman’s fighting style, and Bateman would likely not be able to land an attack. I would also like to take this moment to settle a debate between me and everyone I have ever talked to about this. I don’t know why, but I always thought Megamind looked exactly like Neil Patrick Harris. So much so that I thought he was voiced by the actor for at least seven years before actually looking up the cast and realizing I was wrong. I do not know how I am the only one who thinks this, but I will die on this hill.

I wanted to give some appreciation to one of my all-time favorites movies: Sister Act, starring Whoopi Goldberg. If you don’t know this movie, it’s about a Vegas lounge singer named Deloris Van Cartier who witnesses her mobster boyfriend commit some crimes, and goes into witness protection at a convent, where she teaches them how to sing. Comedy 10/10, music 10/10, literally everything 10/10 I love that movie so much. So, I put Deloris Van Cartier against Homer Simpson, because they’re both regular people, and let’s be honest, I haven’t been the nicest by putting a Wall Street investment banker against an alien supervillain. However, ChatGPT said it couldn’t choose a winner. Are you actually kidding me? We have Deloris Van Cartier, a street-smart and resourceful woman, against Homer Simpson. He works a dead-end job, has interesting parenting skills, and his street-smarts are at rock bottom. In my humble opinion, Deloris Van Cartier would absolutely demolish Homer Simpson, and there is no question about it even if ChatGPT thinks “the outcome of a fight would depend on the specific circumstances of the confrontation”. We really can’t trust technology these days.

The final pair-up in this bracket was Elsa from Frozen and Han Solo. Once again, the queen of indecisiveness ChatGPT couldn’t think of a winner, but this time, I have to say I agree. One hand, we have Elsa, whose magical powers would easily give her an upper hand if she instantly froze Han Solo. In Star Wars’ The Empire Strikes Back, we saw Han Solo get frozen in carbonite by Darth Vader, which incapacitated him for a hot second until Princess Leia rescued him from Jabba the Hutt’s lair. If Elsa was to do this, it would be an easy fight – however, Han Solo’s close combat skills could distract her for a significant amount of time until he can escape. Also, he has a gun. So there’s that. However, since this is a family-friendly blog post, I will declare Elsa as the winner. 

So, we’ve made it to our next round, but I think this one will tie up pretty quickly.

I thought Shrek and Megamind would have an obvious winner, but ChatGPT made me think a bit more. ChatGPT emphasized Shrek’s strength, durability and “strong sense of smell” (??) and how it could allow him to overpower Megamind in one-on-one combat. This surprised me, because I thought Megamind would be an obvious winner. If I could work spiked platform combat boots and use alien technology to disintegrate my enemies, I think I could take on a seven foot ogre pretty easily. 

Between Elsa and Deloris, I also think Elsa’s ice powers would give her an easy upper hand against a power-less human, and she would win the fight pretty easily.

And that brings us to our last gladiator fight: Megamind vs. Elsa. Once again, ChatGPT doesn’t know what’s going on, but I vote for Megamind. Think about it: if you had futuristic military technology and secret supervillain lair, shouldn’t it be easy to beat a 20-something woman who, while she can make ice projectiles and shoot them at you, you can melt them with a ray gun? I certainly think so. And that brings us to our final winner, Megamind! What did I learn from this experience? Maybe ChatGPT can come up with successful military strategy, and maybe I need better ideas for my blog posts.

To me, “dive for dreams” by E.E. Cummings is the perfect example of a reverse poem in the difficulty sense. When looked at as a whole, it was quite simple, and seemed to be encouraging the reader to move past distractions and difficulty and follow their dreams. In fact, the meaning was quite cliche. Almost too cliche – and that is what drew me in. The poem made the most sense before I started to read closer and actually consider every word that Cummings used. The meaning was not obscured with fog – I was 80% sure the theme was something in the ballpark of motivation and living life to the fullest. Or maybe 60%. 

For all intents and purposes, the poem is quite straightforward, as far as E. E. Cummings’ poems go. However, what struck me as difficult in this poem was the second layer of meaning, and specifically the vocabulary he chose. As soon as I started reading, the word “slogan” threw me for a loop. All the slogans I had known were catchy sayings used in advertisements. Knowing this, I was confused as to the possible meaning of the word in this context. Upon further research, I realized “slogan” could actually be defined, according to Merriam-Webster, as any phrase expressing a goal. When I think of the word “goal”, I think of the word “lofty”, which lends itself to height or ambition. This grandiose diction stood out to me because of its contrast with the opening line, in which Cummings tells the audience, which is the reader, to “dive for dreams.” Initially reading that first sentence, I thought it could be a reference to two things: either Cummings was telling the reader they had to dive into their own psyche to figure out what their dreams were in the first place, or they had to dive deep and work hard to achieve whatever they wanted to do, which was the more cliche option. After seeing the contrast between the first and second line, however, I started lean towards a third option – that one has to treat their sense of determination like quicksand, and literally sink themselves into their goals so that the tempting call of a lofty, unattainable goal, does not disrupt the pursuit of a realistic one. 

As I continued reading on, my reading flow was interrupted by seventh and eighth lines – “(and live by love/though the stars walk backward)”. I immediately understood it was personification, but why would stars walk backward? After thinking about it for a while, my idea was that every night, the stars seem to walk backwards through the sky as the Earth moves towards daylight. Could Cummings be saying that we have to live by love even through the relentless and indifferent passing of time? Or, could it be more literal, and could Cummings be calling on the reader to trust their heart even “if the seas catch fire” or “the stars walk backward”, citing near-impossible events that would test the reader’s devotion to themself, which should be first and foremost in their life?

The E.E. Cummings poem we read in class, “[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]”, heavily used parentheses as a sort of echo or chorus that shows the speaker’s deeper thoughts. The parentheses were also an important part of this poem, but I did not understand what function they served. The conclusion I eventually reached is that they serve a similar purpose to Cummings’ other poem, in the sense that they offer a metaphorical extension, or a deeper look at the line that came before. This relationship was especially apparent in the first stanza, where the imagery that the word “topple” induces is similar to the image of the wind blowing down a tree. The first two lines, “dive for dreams/or a slogan may topple you”, were a reference to holding your own, and not letting trivial distractions take away from your focus on your own goals. However, the next two lines, “(trees are their roots/and wind is wind)” use imagery to expand this idea in a less direct way. The way I interpreted this line, Cummings is implying that trees without roots are nothing but long sticks that are somehow standing. They have nothing grounding them, and nothing to keep them anchored when a big gust of wind comes. By saying that “wind is wind”, Cummings casually reinforces a basic truth. Wind is natural, and its purpose is to move, and to “topple”. The wind toppling a tree is perfectly unnatural, just like the seas catching fire or the stars walking backward. That just the wind could topple a 50 or 100-year-old tree seems impossible, but with no roots, it’s no wonder the tree is that weak.

As I said before, I don’t think the theme of this poem is the most difficult part to uncover. What makes this poem more difficult than the ones we all read in fourth grade is the way Cummings uses imagery to develop the theme of self-love and living life the best we can with the time we still have left. One of my favorite lines of the poem is in the third stanza – “and dance your death/away at this wedding”. As I kept reading this poem through, this line was the one I kept coming back to. The alliteration in the first line drew me in with the way it connected dancing and death – one associated with vitality, and one with mortality. Dancing and death seem to have nothing in common, but dancing at a wedding is something that conjures feelings of joy and celebration. In my eyes, what Cummings is trying to say here is that by living life for your own enjoyment and ignoring the ever-present idea of death, we can all prolong our life. Maybe we will not live 15 more years, but we sure will feel like we accomplished a lot more if we were happy. 

Although analyzing the poem deeply led to me uncovering a lot of the small details that confused me, there are still parts that are unclear to me. In the last paragraph, why does Cummings write that “god likes girls”? I understand the last line, and how if God exists, their compassion for the Earth is what makes them love the idea of what tomorrow holds for us. Regardless, what is the significance of “girls?” Is it something about innocence or beauty? Even though there are still parts of the poem that I do not understand, I feel like analyzing this poem gave me a new perspective on not only Cummings’ writing, but on life itself. If we don’t know what waits for us at the end, why are we always searching for it? Why don’t we focus on what we have here and now, and live by love with our hearts open?